CSBG Archive

The Abandoned An’ Forsaked Archive

Here is an archive of all the editions of The Abandoned An’ Forsaked that we have done so far. This is for comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically “overturned” by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent).

The more recent posts are at the end of the piece.

Click on each one to see a write-up of the abandoned (and overturned) storyline…

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110 Comments

DBHughes

The post Zero-Hour “Archie” Legion was pretty obviously leading up to a reveal that R.J. Brande was the Martian Manhunter. Brande was very nostalgic about 20th century super heroes (including many artifacts from that era in his office); Brande named “Mon’el” based on a Martian name; Brande was shown to have some telepathic ability near the end of the run. Abnett and Lanning came on and all of that was forgotten and never followed up on, but it was pretty clear where the story was going. Wiki says something about JLA Dan Raspler vetoing the idea thus keeping the Manhunter idea from being official, but I don’t know if that ‘s true.

POWRSURG

Black Manta

Anyone remember a storyline with the X-Books that had a group who were hunting mutants for points, kind of like a reality show. I think Grayton Creed was one of the contestants. It was run by someone named Gamesmaster or something (not the Elder of the Universe one).

Michael

That one, at least, got resolved. The Upstarts competition came to a head in the “CHILD’S PLAY” crossover between X-Force and New Warriors. The short version is that all the key players either got killed or got their butts handed to them, and the competition ended with no winner. Gamesmaster went on to vaguely menace Deadpool and Siryn in a few later issues of X-Force …. and hasn’t been heard from in a while.

Alex

Stephen C.

Bleedingcool.com just had an interesting article similar to these about a Superman story that would have been similar to the clone saga in the Spider-man comics. It’s just a theory but for the people enjoying these abandoned story lines it could be an interesting read: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/12/16/whatever-happened-1998-death-of-superman/ By the way these articles are great! Good job Brian.

Star Saber

Let’s not forget that the recent Annihilation Darkhawk mini series essentially wiped out a huge chunk of the original Darkhawk run, including his origin wherein his armor and power gem were the products of alien scientists commissioned by an alien warlord in order to gain more power for himself and his men, only to have the scientists rebel against him and hide on Earth and parts unknown.

Travis Pelkie

@Stephen C. : the best part of the comments for that Bleeding Cool article were the links to CBLR articles effectively debunking that story. (side note to Brian, if you look at that link, the writer posits that Superman Annuals were not done too much between ’87 and ’90, which commenters questioned, and also that the Superman/Sand story came out a week before the Death of Superman, which doesn’t sound right. I don’t think either of those rise to the Legend level, but maybe…)

@Star Saber: Hey, the Matrix version of Supergirl was completely unmentioned in the short documentary on the Superman/Batman:Apocalypse DCAU DVD. So DC just doesn’t like her….

Logan

Probably not going to have this one address, but I would really like to know the back-story behind Dazzler seemingly being made immortal in Excalibur. They had a running story of Alison being killed in action and then springing back to life in a few hours. I don’t think it has ever been address in any of her appearances after the book was canceled.

Brian Cronin

Mark Boyer

Graydon Creed’s killer was revealed to be his mother, Mystique, in X-Men Forever (vol.1). I think she did it while she was time-traveling, if I remember correctly. Prosh (Ship) sent Jean Grey, Juggernaut, Toad, Iceman, and Mystique on missions through time to correct/change certain things. I believe this is also where they established that her “default” look was now what Mystique looks like in the movies, with the blue scales and spikes.

Chris Lang

Okay, some of these on the list had good reason to be overturned (Alex Power is a horse, Leslie Thomkins broke her Hippocratic Oath and let someone die just to prove a point to Batman) since they were bad ideas to start with.

But others … well, they’re just maddening. Don’t get me started on how Aunt May’s death was undone. The way they brought her back from the dead makes the whole ‘Bobby Ewing is alive and in the shower, and the whole last season was a dream’ thing on Dallas look like a work of genius. I could post a long, lengthy rant about it. But for now, I’ll just quote The Spoony Experiment.

John Adams

Around issues #100 – 102 of X-Men vol 2 Kitty Pryde had to escape from a space station in some kind of battlesuit. The rest of the X-Men had intended to go in search for her, but were distracted by some other mutant crisis involving a group called the Neo. THEY NEVER RESUMED THEIR SEARCH FOR KITTY! Kitty then turned up randomly in an X-Treme X-Men annual a few years later. I have yet to see any mention of where she had been or what happened since she crash landed.

Adam Taylor

Daryll B.

@Adam Taylor The Cannonball Immortality thing has been largely forgotten and I think wiped out during the House of M. However, the X-Ternals thing was quickly resolved in the pages of X-Force with most of the group being wiped outby Selene (I think) before the book went “weird” with the X-Statix stuff….

clasey gables

What about mark miller and hitchs run on the fantastic four where they meet dooms master?At the end of the storyline dooms power should be increased beyond anyones and yet it seems to be thrown away when thor can hand him his butt.

Chaim Mattis Keller

I’d like to propose the abandoned storyline of Power Girl’s true parentage, as hinted at in issues of Geoff Johns’s JSA title between about # 30 and # 50. After the Crisis, Power Girl was retconned into the integrated DCU as the granddaughter of Arion, Lord of Atlantis, and that her attachment to Superman was something he had programmed into her somehow. This was considered canon for about 25 years, and then Johns started hinting that her powers weren’t related to ancient Atlantean magic. Then, in the “Princes of Darkness” story, the soul of Arion says that he had lied about her origins a part of some promise made to her mother to protect her…and that’s all we heard of that storyline until Infinite Crisis brought back the Multiverse and she was revealed to have been a survivor of Earth-2’s Krypton all along. But it’s pretty obvious that that conclusion wasn’t Johns’s original intent, and the plans changed due to the editorial demands of Infinite Crisis. I would have loved to know where Johns was originally planning to go with that.

eforextinct

Of all the abondoned storylines in history, the Cannonball/External storyline burns me the most. Only because during this time in the early to mid 90’s they were positioning that story as integral to the whole defeat of Apocalypse and the X-Books, but they seemingly abandoned it and was confirmed abandoned when they ran the Apocalypse “The Twelve” storyline and Cannonball was nowhere to be seen. I can’t tell you how many conventions I’ve been to asking the question to Marvel representatives and they don’t even remember the series! Sure they kinda/sorta resolved the External storyline in X-Force vol. 1 #54, but that issue actually raised more questions about Cannonball in fact being an external from Selene.

joe havasy

What about that time prof x had a new team of x-men, during the bachelo run, when nighcrawler and kitty rejoined? And of course the whole Maggott, Celia Reyes, and Marrow members. They kinda just dropped off..

lol

Fred le Mallrat

There is this cliffhanger in Daredevil just before Born Again with Black Crow, saying that he need to see DD (or whatever) or this mention by an elf in an early X-men story by Claremont/Cockrumm in the Bmack tom’s Castle where it is said that Wolvie is not human.

Another revised storyline from the Byrne FF: Sue Richards becomes so neurotic about her repressed resentments of Reed that she becomes the schizoid villainess Malice. Someone, possibly deFalco, didn’t like the foremost mother in Marvel Comics being a nasty nutcase, so Malice became an alien being hanging out in Sue’s head.

adamwarlock

Perhaps not a retcon but anyone recall that Ben Grim at the end of Walt Simonson’s run voluntarily became the Thing again (after using the Thing suit for awhile)? To me, this would mean he likes being the Thing and has accepted the role. But we eventually come to a “Ben is bummed about being the Thing” story and it rings false if he chose to go back.

Black Manta

I completely forgot about the Spider Woman/Viper thing. I remember the only reason I bought my first issue of Cap was because Spider Woman was in it (logo and all on the cover, which now that I think about it was kind of weird).

Reverend Meteor

1. In New Warriors #47 the Sphinx splits the New Warriors up through time and space sending them into the past or in Nova’s case an alternate timeline. Speedball gets sent into the “kinetic dimension” which is where his bubble powers come from. In New Warriors #49 Speedball reasons that this dimension and Speedball’s powers are a representation of time. Every moment that goes by more bubbles appear in the dimension by the billions but none of the old bubbles disappear. One bubble calls out to him and he muses that this bubble represents the exact moment in time he got his powers and he swallows it and experiences what appears to be a rather heavy epiphany. In issue 50 Speedball is rescued from the kinetic dimension by a new team of New Warriors and Speedball has forgotten whatever he learned about his origins. The New New Warriors rescue the New Warriors and defeat the time traveler known as the Sphinx…the Sphinx later merges with his distaff counterpart the female Sphinx into an androgynous being and they go back in time to live their lives over again. The Sphinx returns a year or so later to kill Speedball. At this time we learn that Speedball was replaced in issue 50 by a clone from the future with the buried memories of his descendant Darrion Grobe created as part of a plot to stop his insane time traveling father Ardent. The real Speedball was eventually freed from the kinetic dimension…and he also appears to have no memory of that secret the bubble showed him in issue 49.

Reverend Meteor

Ben didn’t go back to being the Thing because he really wanted to be the Thing again. At the time Sharon Ventura aka Ms. Marvel 2 was on the team as She-Thing while Ben had been turned human several issues earlier. Sharon had been unstable since being gang banged by the Power Broker’s Men and was becoming more and more bitter about being a Thing and where her relationship with Ben was heading now that he was human. Sharon betrayed the team to Doom so she could turn back into a human. Ben used Reed’s machines to do the opposite and turn back into the Thing because he didn’t want Sharon to be a Thing by herself. He did it out of pity for his mentally unstable insecure girlfriend.

That said Ben had come to peace with being a Thing when he and Sharon were Things together. Once he was back to being a Thing by himself again I think his insecurities came back. A part of me wonders if the reason he overcame his mind block and turned back into Ben when he was dating Sharon was a result of him actually overcoming the mind block instead of that accident that turned him human (maybe it was just a catalyst). He didn’t hate being the Thing any more and came to embrace it…once he found self acceptance he was cured.

Max_Power

I would like one article of this column regarding Jean Gray. At first, she became the Phoenix, went mad, destroyed a solar system and then suicided. Then, it was revealed that no, that the Jean Gray that was the Phoenix, was only a construct of the Phoenix Force and that the real Jean Gray was never the Phoenix.

But now? Even if nobody ever says something like “Remember the time Jean destroyed a star?”, Jean and the beings that share her DNA have manifested Phoenix powers multiple times. If they have access to that power, why was it a construct created by the Phoenix Force the Jean Gray that went mad? And why the real Jean Gray didn’t went mad when she really manifested Phoenix powers? It seems as if that her doppelgänger sometimes existed, and sometimes as if it was Jean herself doing stuff, even if comics have never said that explicitly. Nevertheless, at times it seems like the line get blurred between Jean Gray and her Phoenix Force created duplicate. So it isn’t exactly a Forsaken and Forgotten storyline, but it seems on its way to becoming one.

“what aboout the Aquaman “Sub Diego” arc? We never did find out who was responsible for the sinking of half of San Diego or why? Who was Mr. J?”

I think this was partly resolved later on–In Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #56 [2007], Cyborg and Aquaman uncovered information about the sinking of San Diego. In that issue, readers are introduced to Greg Jupiter, Loren Jupiter’s previously unseen brother. Greg Jupiter ran Pro-Gene Tech, which was responsible for the sinking of San Diego and transforming its citizens into water breathers.

blackphoenix77

@Max_Power, the status of Jean Grey’s connection to the Phoenix has changed many times over the years. Originally, Jean evolved into the Phoenix after dying during and being reborn as a being of psychic energy. Her new powers were simply the ultimate extension of her telepathic/telekinetic abilities. After Jean died in Uncanny X-Men # 137, Marvel wanted to use her for their new X-Factor book, so they decided to explain away the whole thing as an entity–the Phoenix Force–that merely copied Jean’s form and memories and took her place while the real Jean was in suspended animation. Eventually, that retcon was retconned as well; the back-up. Feature in Classic X-Men # 8 revealed that the Phoenix Force bonded with Jean in a new form that was a perfect duplicate of Jean’s body. A small spark of Jean’s soul remained in her original body, and it was that Jean that returned to life after the events of Avengers # 263 and Fantastic Four #287 (which lead into X-Factor # 1). X-Factor #38 sees the Phoenix Force restore the half of Jean it was bonded with.

It is also eventually revealed that Jean is the Phoenix Force’s Prime Host, the White Phoenix of The Crown. In Phoenix:Endsong, Jean states that she has always been Phoenix, and the end of the mini-series seemed to imply that Jean and the Phoenix Force were now fully merged into one Entity.

ARCEE

Didn’t the Kents adopt somebody BEFORE they found Clark? Wasn’t Bruce actually Thomas and Martha’s second child? Didn’t Lex Luthor (pre-Crisis) destroy an entire planet, with his wife and child? (Around the same time he got the armor look?)

Scavenger

@blackphoenix77: The Phoenix Force was a thing long before Jean came back in X-Factor. It had shown up (and possessed Cyclops) in Claremont’s X-Men/Teen Titans and Rachel became it’s host in X-Men #199 (iirc).

Mike

@ogeorge: Yes he did, in Englehart’s 70’s run. I remember him tearing down a steel wall with his bare hands (though it was obviously difficult and took time). It was around the time the Falcon got his wings (early 70’s). I missed a few issues after that, but I don’t think they ever resolved it. It was just ignored afterward.

Alex

In regardds to the Ben Reilly Spider-man article. Having read some of the BND stuff and the Ben Reilly solo Spider-man stuff when he donned the new costume. I have to say, the Ben Reilly stuff IS IT. It’s not the fact that he wasn’t on 3 different teams and changed costume every few issues. Stuff could still happen. No doubt he’d ended up working for Jonah and only Robbie would have a clue what was going on. He was Spider-MAN and not reduced to jokey guy.

Oh… Aunt May was dead. Can’t complain about that.

Did they ever reveal what was up with Gambit and Sinister regarding that little package he was given?

Travis Pelkie

@Alex: Well, in What If 100 they *kinda* revealed the Gambit/Sinister package, in a pretty neat little story. Maybe the creators, Ivan Velez or Klaus Janson will pop in to say something about it. I don’t know what the “real” solution to it was, though.

Mike K

We need another category: Comic Artists and writers that draw themselves (ie star as a cameo) in the books where they are the writer/artist.
I have definitely seen Walt Simonson, John Byrne and Chris Claremont make appearances.

Mike

Frank Rook

G’nort’s survival is something that keeps being abandoned. He was hinted as being killed off-screen in an issue of Guy Gardner Warrior (when Guy rescues a group of former Lanterns, they talk of the horrible things done to “the dog”), then he shows up alive and well in a Green Lantern Secret Files, then there’s a gravestone with his name in Guide to the DC Universe 2000 Secret Files, then he’s alive again but now a Darkstar in I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League, then he’s a GL again in the Guy Gardner Collateral Damage mini but made grim and gritty, and finally treated as “presumed dead” in the GL Sinestro Corps Secret Files. Now he doesn’t even exist in the NuDCU! Poor guy, he’s certainly been abandoned and forsaken.

Gerard Morvan

jacob

the one i have been wanting to see a end to sub plot is the deathwing Storyline from team titans and Titans storyline. orginally he was a future version of dick but was corrupted by raven and then i have never seen a resoultion to this storyline.

Fraser

Oh, now here’s an abandoned storyline of sorts. Dr. Strange finally retires in the early 1970s having decided he’s done enough he can walk away. Then a few months later, he’s forced back into action by an attack by Baron Mordo–I’ve always assumed this was because Roy Thomas had to substitute him in the Defenders for the Silver Surfer in Titans Three.

Sherman

With the reboot we’ll never know what the deal with Deathwing was. Was Deathwing still around after the last issue of Team Titans? I just assumed he was one of Extant’s army and disappeared with the rest.

Sherman

Fraser

Sherman, Deathwing did survive: As pointed out in the post on the second Terra, he, Mirage and Terra were all taken from the present by the Time Trapper and inserted into Extant’s alt. future as sleeper agents among Extrant’s sleeper agents. Later, after he’d fallen in with evil Raven, Deathwing tells Mirage that he’s learned who he really is and she’d completely freak out if she knew the unbelievable truth. But Wolfman never got around to revealing it and nobody else was interested in following up (not that I can blame them–Deathwing never impressed me).

jacob

I always thought that the Answer to who Deathwing was would be a good way to return Jason Todd to the DCU and how they could explain the similar look to Dick and the easyness in how he turned bad. And also explain how raven was familar with him since jason was with the titans on a few missions before he died.

Fraser

JD

There should be one about is Polaris Magneto’s daughter or not? At one point she thought she was because of the similar powers and some other stuff, then supposedly there was some proof they weren’t related (and later for a while even her powers changed and she was apparently Zaladane’s sister) then suddenly without any real explanation that I’d ever seen she was claiming to be ol’ helmet head’s kid again (but also sort of gone crazy around the time).

@ Frank Rook: I share your confusion, etc. regarding G’Nort. He should’ve been as important a fun character as was Ambush Bug. However, as seen by Dan Didio’s reign @ DC, it’s not fun unless *they* think it’s fun. Thank god for all the pre-Didio trades of DCU stories..

Oy

Justin

No, JD at one point she thought she was because in her founding storyline in 1968 Magneto says she is his daughter and that was the central theme of the storyline which was undone in 1969 in a very poor manner and I am not just talking about her parentage, but also that the Magneto in the storyline was retconned into a robot. Honestly, the whole thing read more like a bad editoral intervention then a planned decision by the writers from early on.

Brian Cronin

That was just the dark side of Earth. The side not facing the sun. It was not a missing part of Earth. The last page was just to note that there was now this collection of energy that was loose as a result of the Scarlet Witch’s “no more mutants” deal. That bundle of energy showed up in X-Men: Deadly Genesis (it awoke Vulcan) and in the New Avengers (where it powered a mutant named Michael Pointer with all the powers of the de-powered mutants).

Fields

Paul L

What about Shatterstar’s origins. They have said he had DNA identical to Longshot, then did the thing with Benjamin Russell, but he also comes from 100 years in Longshot’s future. I also second the Cannonball thing, but they reason they abandoned it was because they were afraid of lawsuits from Highlander.

Brian Cronin

The trouble with Cannonball is that I don’t believe they ever actually forsaked it. Just abandoned it. And as for the Highlander thing, you might want to check out the Comic Book Legends Revealed archive.

Gonzoberger

I’d really like to know the back story on WHEN the Punisher offed himself and became an avenging angel. I know that during the beginning of Ennis’ run, someone on the letters page asked what the thing on the Punisher’s forehead meant. The answer was, “Mistake”.

I’d like to see a spotlight on one of the most famous abandoned storylines I can remember … Steve Gerber’s murderous elf story in Defenders. When he left the series the next writer had the little guy run over by a truck, as I recall. Would be nice to find out what Gerber planned to do with said elf!

Anonymous

[…] have missed the entire world. Well CBR knows exactly how you feel, and have put together a list of forgotten story-lines that will help you remember and hopefully give you some insight. Via Comic Book […]

Daniel Coogan

It would be an idea to reverse-number the countdown on this page so the newest entry is first. It’s a little annoying clicking the link and having to scroll down to the end of the page to find and click another link that leads you to eventually read what you wanted to see in the first place. Just a thought.

I remember reading the story revealing Ned as the Hobgoblin and thought it made no sense, pretty much for the same reasons that Mary Jane lays out in “Hobgoblin Lives”. How in the world would four regular men take him out so easily when he could fight Spider-man to a standstill? And, here he was this big master criminal and he becomes this big whiner? And, how lame to reveal that this big villain that’s been getting all this build-up was killed off in a separate one-shot that had nothing to do with his ongoing storyline. “Hobgoblin Lives” I thought reconciled straightened out a lot of inconsistencies and lame storytelling with some enjoyable art.

Dan

Here is a great one I have been wondering about for years. Where was Dazzler for all those years. She popped up in the Xmen one day and joined Jean’s Xmen (with Northstar, and some new mutants including a brainwashed Frenzy). THey have never discussed what was going on there.

kdu2814

Josh

This is the one column on this site I consistently see this happen with, and it’s the only one I read that points to the archive instead of directly to the article. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it, but this is one of my favorites so it drives me nuts.

Bogie

In early Uncanny X-Men history Clairemont and Cockrum had Nightcrawler be able to be invisible when in shadows…and then later this was abandoned completely. I can’t remember if this ability was dealt with in story or not, but it went away for good as far as I know.

catsmeow

Smash Magnavox

I agree with ‘Catsmeow. Hal was a boring “just want my kids back” /”regrets of a drinker” kind of guy before Emerald Twilight (and a pedophile before that during the Englehart era, but they never directly that brought up,
i.e. – fucking Arisa the second she was “magically” changed to legal age) and it totally made sense that some guy who would act these ways *would* go completely apeshit crazy, especially after learning the power the central battery really held (i.e.- end of old series where they kill sinestro & then again in the new series a couple times, like when Trinity event was going on and suddenly all these backdrop celestial relatives of the guardians were being used to pan out issues) the mythology was over-explored then and today in the Geoff Johns-verse it is as well. I think that’s the sign to switch it up. AND THEY DID. Parallax was a great, underused character back in the 90s (the final panel of the 2-parter where he tries to take the ring back from Kyle (“Parallax View”) still gives me chills.) They kept him at bay from being plot-strong to storylines as Kyle explored the new ring & its legacy, and instead he hung over the Marz/Banks series as more a possibility than a reoccuring villian. Every issue as we found out the limitations & improvements of the ring with Kyle there was always the theme of preserving this legacy that was not his to begin with nor by his choice, but to do good & make these sealed figurehead ancestors proud without having any kind of backing/reassurance that he was doing it right. Kyle was a great character to watch through the careful rungs of novicehood & seasoning by Marz (and to spellbinding fruition/completion by Winnick) and to be frank, it just plain sucks that so much of its progression was marred by Johns. Not to say those old JLA issues where, even though Kyle was already running circles around serious villians in his own book, he was still being written as a “hang in there” guy, but even towards the end of John’s run he was still getting shafted in character development.

For instance: until around issue 80-ish of the Marz run, Kyle was practically over his dead girlfriend Alex (or at least referencing it), yet Johns kept pulling it out for show & tell to fill out monologuing. Gardner was such a motherfucker as Warrior, not this retroactive “cheese & grits” blue collar jerk from back in his JLI days when he was concussioning. Stewart was cool as a wheelchair guy, no offense, and was REPEATEDLY offered second chances at ring-ship by Kyle, yet was always firm in his saying no. (even when Fatality tried to kill his girlfriend). These character developments were treasured not because they were novel (*just) but because they made sense and were adhered to like glue from Superman’s coffin. Maybe once in a while they would “cut loose”, but it was clear their glory days were retired and they all had grown up & gotten jobs.

JosephW

Just out of curiosity Brian, but is there a way that the link for whatever “Abandoned an’ Forsaked” story is shown on the CBR homepage could take us to THAT particular story instead of the Archive? When you get to the specific “A&F” story, there’s a link back to the Archives page, so why doesn’t the homepage link take us directly to the “A&F” story being displayed? (For example, the “A&F” story on today’s CBR homepage is “So Superman’s Parents Didn’t Die” but the link brings us to this page from which we then have to scroll down to entry #116 to click on THAT link.)

I mean, after all, the “Comic Book Legends Revealed” and “The Line It Is Drawn” entries on the CBR homepage take us to the current week’s entry (and an archive can then be accessed via links on those new pages). Why not with the “Abandoned an’ Forsaked?”

Rick Mitchell

How about the fact that it was a long time before Wolverine’s healing factor was ever mentioned, and numerous early comics in Claremont’s X-Men run have lines that directly contradict him having one (like one time when he said “I’ll be black-and-blue for a week!”). So, basically, Wolverine having a healing factor at all appears to be one of the most colossal retcons in comics history.

Paul Garcia

Any chance of dropping in on Silver Surfer’s stint in Dynamo City? He vowed to return but doesn’t go even when he is just star-hopping.
This was around the time Thanos was gathering the Soul/Infinity Gems for the first time.
Seems pretty much abandoned by now.

lanier2369

Ok, this isn’t a critique, just an observation, because this is a favorite feature of mine, but it seems like some of these are just the later story being written without any knowledge of the previous story or info being there. like the Cyclops glasses thing. The wrter of the later story just seemed like he didn’t know the information was out there and not that he thought that it was a bad idea that the orphanage helped him get it or whatever. Again not a critique….

jmyoung

I have despised him primarily because of his FF run post-Simonson that pretty much undid most of Byrne’s run. That and a few other comics I read suggested he was an incredible hack.

However, given that he appears to have been tasked specifically with undoing a plot point here, perhaps he was tasked the same way with FF. I don’t know if being a hatchet man makes you better or worse than a creative hack, but I have slightly less disrespect for him if he was simply being a company man.